October 25, 2008

Tottenham Hotspur Clean House, Dump Coach Juande Ramos: Spurs, with just two points after nine matches, have fired coach Juande Ramos, assistant coaches Gus Poyet and Marcos Alvarez, and sporting director Damien Comolli. No Premiership team has started this poorly and avoided relegation in 10 years.

Such a precipitous drop from League Cup Winners and knocking on the door the Champions League to utter ineptitude from bottom to top of the club. Doesn't help when you sell off Berbatov and Keane. How do you expect to score if you don't replace them with capable strikers? As an Arsenal fan, though, I do kind of enjoy this.

After Derby's horror season last year, I can't help watching this with a strong sense of schadenfreude.

However, I don't think Derby were actually trying to stay in the top flight. Most fans were phlegmatic that the club used promotion and the subsequent parachute payment merely to retire some debt. Spurs are a club that always fancies itself to do well. Which begs a couple of questions - what have Spurs done with the money from Keane and Berbatov? And how are their finances generally?

Tottenham Chairman Daniel Levy has posted an open letter on the firings and the hiring of Coach Harry Redknapp from Portsmouth.

I think Spurs had a lot of money to spend, and may have more for the transfer window in January, but the players they've acquired seem out of place and haven't meshed at all. There's very little team play. As the most glaring example of poor coordination, the new goalie Gomes twice hammered his own defender Corluka against Stoke City, sending him to the hospital.

Redknapp seems like a much better choice to grind out a season that escapes relegation than Ramos. If I was a Portsmouth fan I'd be bitter that he moved on in mid-season like this and expressed joy at "finally" being with a top club. Ouch.

Unsurprising. What would have been a better move would have been to dump the chairman, Levy (or dump both). On the plus side, Spurs fans will have an interesting transfer season as Ol' 'arry churns player contracts to line his pockets on the way out.
/cynical

Another "triumph" for the Director of Football role here, as Ramos is fired for trying to make a team out of the decisions of Damien Comolli.

The appointment of Redknapp makes a severe about-face at White Hart Lane as they replace Comolli/Ramos with one guy who's not exactly scared to wheel and deal on the player market. It wouldn't surprised me to see Mr Crouch make his way from the coast to London in the January transfer window.

And unlike Ramos, Harry won't need a translator to point out what a bunch of lazy planks a lot of his players are.

For all the hurt Spurs were in, spending nearly $10M on a manager when guys like Mancini and Donadoni are out there seems a waste of money, but then look at the team's summer spending. They did get the three points today but...

MrB: I was just wondering how that "director of football" role has affected, yea, damaged, Spurs this season. How much say did Ramos have in selling his three top goalscorers, and buying one untested striker to replace them, based on the Euro championshop? (How many successful Russians in the EPL can anyone name?) I really think this director of football role is crap. See how well it worked out and continues to work out at Newcastle.

I think Spurs escape relegation. They are only three points from safety and still have a lot of talent, even with the summer sales. I'm sure they will also be big players in the January transfer window.

Well, after Citeh pick up Fabregas, Ronaldo, Torres, Messi, Villa, Kaka, Pope Benedict XVI, and that guy from Police Academy who makes funny noises with his mouth, I think they will not have room for the Defoes et al that may just help Spurs survive the drop.